Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is a 49-episode television anime produced by Sunrise and broadcast in Japan on TV Asahi from April 7, 1995 to March 29, 1996. Directed by Masashi Ikeda and written principally by Katsuyuki Sumisawa, it places Gundam conflict in the After Colony calendar, beginning in AC 195. Its central premise is Operation Meteor: five teenage pilots are dispatched from space colonies to Earth in separate Gundams. The pilots are Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, Quatre Raberba Winner, and Chang Wufei. Heero arrives near a military installation and encounters Relena Dorlian, the adopted daughter of Vice Foreign Minister Dorlian. Relena later learns that she is Relena Peacecraft, daughter of the murdered leader of the pacifist Sanc Kingdom. Her relationship with Heero links the series' private drama to its political struggle. The Earth Sphere Unified Alliance uses the secret organization OZ as a military force, while OZ officer Zechs Merquise is the masked pilot known as the Lightning Baron. The show does not keep its factions fixed: Treize Khushrenada leads OZ, the Romefeller Foundation backs mobile doll automation, and colony resistance eventually takes the name White Fang. Zechs becomes White Fang's leader as Milliardo Peacecraft, claiming the Peacecraft identity connected to Relena. Important machines include Heero's Wing Gundam, Duo's Deathscythe, Trowa's Heavyarms, Quatre's Sandrock, and Wufei's Shenlong. Their later upgraded forms include Wing Zero, whose Zero System feeds combat data to its pilot and can overwhelm the user's judgment. Quatre builds and first operates Wing Zero after obtaining its blueprints, and its effects become a recurring danger. In the final conflict, Relena serves as Romefeller's chief representative and advocates total pacifism, while the mobile dolls make warfare increasingly impersonal. The television story ends with the destruction of the Libra battleship and a renewed effort toward peace, rather than a simple victory for one army. Character designs were created by Hiroshi Osaka, while the principal Gundam designs are credited to Kunio Okawara and Hajime Katoki. Katoki's mechanical work also shaped the later redesigns associated with the franchise. In North America, Gundam Wing became the first Gundam television series broadcast on Cartoon Network's Toonami block, premiering there in 2000. Its visibility helped introduce many English-speaking viewers to Gundam, although the original Japanese series had already concluded. The 1997 original video animation sequel Endless Waltz revisits Heero and the other pilots directly after the television series.